Today phones, tomorrow computers
Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4969312.ece
By any metric the surveillance policies being enacted by the current government are strongly characteristic of both authoritarian and totalitarian governments. This has gone way beyond a matter of polite debate. Our basic freedoms are being systematically destroyed by a coterie of ex-academics, ex-broadcasters, ex-journalists and career politicians i.e. the current government (most of whom really should know better…)
Tags: authoritarianism, civil liberties, politics, privacy, surveillance